By Aristotle Written B.C.E Translated by W. D. Ross: Table of Contents Book I: Part 1 "ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight Jun 10, · Courtesy of translator Giles Laurén, author of "The Stoic's Bible," here is a list of 30 Aristotle quotations from his "Nicomachean Ethics." Many of these may seem like noble goals to live by. They may make you think twice, especially if you don't consider yourself a philosopher, but simply want age-tested ideas on how to live a better life Aristotle’s use of the word catharsis is not a technical reference to purgation or purification but a beautiful metaphor for the peculiar tragic pleasure, the feeling of being washed or cleansed. The tragic pleasure is a paradox. As Aristotle says, in a tragedy, a
Aristotle: Poetics | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The Poetics of Aristotle B. is a much-disdained book. He reduces the drama to its language, people say, and the language itself to its least poetic element, the story, and then he encourages insensitive readers like himself to subject stories to crudely moralistic readings, that reduce tragedies to the aristotle essay proportions of Aesop-fables. Strangely, though, the Aristotle essay itself is rarely read with the kind of sensitivity its critics claim to possess, and the thing criticized is not the book Aristotle wrote but a caricature of it.
Aristotle himself respected Homer so much that he personally corrected a copy of the Iliad for his student Alexander, who carried it all over the world. In his Rhetoric III, xvi, 9Aristotle criticizes orators who write exclusively from the intellect, rather than from the heart, in the way Sophocles makes Antigone speak. Aristotle is aristotle essay thought of as a logician, aristotle essay, but he regularly uses the adverb logikôslogically, as a term of reproach contrasted with phusikôsnaturally or appropriately, to describe arguments made by others, or preliminary and inadequate arguments of his own.
Those who take the trouble to look at the Poetics closely will find, I think, a book that treats its topic appropriately and naturally, aristotle essay, and contains the reflections of a good reader and characteristically powerful thinker.
The first aristotle essay in the Poetics is aristotle essay initial marking out of dramatic poetry as a form of imitation. We call the poet a creator, aristotle essay, and are offended at the suggestion that he might be merely some sort of recording device.
But Aristotle has no intention to diminish the poet, and in fact says the same thing I just said, in making the point that poetry is more philosophic than history, aristotle essay. By imitation, aristotle essay, Aristotle does not mean the sort of mimicry by which Aristophanes, say, finds syllables that approximate the sound of frogs.
He is speaking of the imitation of action, and by action he does not mean mere happenings. Aristotle speaks extensively of praxis in the Nicomachean Ethics, aristotle essay. It is not a word he uses loosely, and in fact his use of it in the definition of tragedy recalls the discussion in the Ethics. Action, as Aristotle uses the word, refers only to what is deliberately chosen, and capable of finding completion in the achievement of some purpose.
Animals and young children do not act in this sense, and action is not the whole of aristotle essay life of any of us. The poet must have an eye for the emergence of action in human life, and a sense for the actions that are worth paying attention to, aristotle essay. They are not present in the world in such a way that a video camera could detect them.
An intelligent, feeling, shaping human soul must find them. By the same token, the action of the drama itself is not on the stage. It takes form and has its being in the imagination of the spectator. The actors speak and move and gesture, but it is the poet who speaks through aristotle essay, from imagination to imagination, to present aristotle essay us the thing that he has made. Because that thing he makes has the form of an action, it has to be seen and held together just as actively and attentively by us as by aristotle essay. The imitation is the thing that is re-produced, in us and for us, by his art.
This is a powerful kind of human communication, and the thing imitated is what defines the human realm.
If no one had the power to imitate action, life might just wash over us without leaving any trace. How do I know that Aristotle intends the imitation of action to be understood in this way? In De Animahe distinguishes three kinds of perception II, 6; III, 3. There is the perception of proper sensibles-colors, sounds, tastes and so on; these lie on the surfaces of things and can be mimicked directly for sense perception.
But there is also perception of common sensibles, available to more than one of our senses, as shape is grasped by both sight and touch, or number by all five senses; these are distinguished by imagination, the power in us that is shared by the five senses, and in which the circular shape, for instance, is not dependent on sight or touch alone.
These common sensibles can be mimicked in various ways, as when I draw a messy, meandering ridge of chalk on a blackboard, and your imagination grasps a circle, aristotle essay. Finally, there is aristotle essay perception of that of which the sensible qualities are attributes, the thing—the son of Diares, aristotle essay example; it is this that we ordinarily mean by perception, and while its object always has an image in the imagination, it can only be distinguished by intellect, no°s III,4.
Skilled mimics can imitate people we know, by voice, gesture, and so on, and aristotle essay already we must engage intelligence and imagination together. The dramatist imitates aristotle essay more remote from the eye and ear than familiar people.
So the mere phrase imitation of an action is packed with meaning, aristotle essay, available to us as soon as we ask what an action is, aristotle essay, and how the image of such a thing might be perceived. In each of these developments there is a vast array of possible intermediate stages, but just as philosophy is the ultimate form of the innate desire to know, tragedy is considered by Aristotle the ultimate form of our aristotle essay delight in imitation.
His beloved Homer saw and achieved the most important possibilities of the imitation of human aristotle essay, but it was the tragedians who, refined and intensified the form of that imitation, aristotle essay, and discovered its perfection.
A work is a tragedy, Aristotle tells us, only if it arouses pity and fear. Why does he single out these two passions? Some interpreters think he means them only as examples—pity and fear and other passions like that—but I am not among those loose constructionists.
Aristotle does use a word that means passions of that sort toioutabut I think he does so only to indicate that pity and fear are not themselves things subject to identification with pin-point precision, aristotle essay, but that each refers to a range of feeling.
It is just the feelings in those two ranges, however, that belong to tragedy. He does not try to prove that aristotle essay is such a thing as nature, or such a thing as motion, though some people deny both. Likewise, he understands the recognition of a special and powerful form of drama built around pity and fear as the beginning aristotle essay an inquiry, aristotle essay, and spends not one word justifying that restriction.
We, however, aristotle essay, can see better why he starts there by trying out a few simple alternatives. Suppose a drama aroused pity in a powerful way, but aroused no fear at all. This is an easily recognizable dramatic form, called a tear-jerker.
The name is meant to disparage this sort of drama, aristotle essay, but why? Imagine aristotle essay well written, well made play or movie that depicts the losing struggle of a likable central character.
We are moved to have a good cry, and are afforded either the relief of a happy ending, or the realistic desolation of a sad one.
In the one case the tension built up along the way is released within the experience of the work itself; in the other it passes off as we leave the theater, and readjust our feelings to the fact that it was, aristotle essay all, only make-believe.
What is wrong with that? There is always pleasure in strong emotion, and the theater is a harmless place to indulge it. We may even come out feeling good about being so compassionate. But Dostoyevski depicts aristotle essay character who loves aristotle essay cry in the theater, not noticing that while she wallows in her warm feelings her coach-driver is shivering outside.
She has day-dreams about relieving suffering humanity, but does nothing to put that vague desire to work. If she is typical, then the tear-jerker is a dishonest form of drama, not even a harmless diversion but an encouragement to lie to oneself. This is again a readily recognizable dramatic form, called the horror story, or in a recent fashion, the mad-slasher movie.
The thrill of fear is the primary object of such amusements, and the story alternates between the build-up of apprehension and the shock of violence. And while the tearjerker gives us an illusion of aristotle essay delicacy, aristotle essay, the unrestrained shock-drama obviously has the effect of coarsening feeling. Genuine human pity could aristotle essay co-exist with the so-called graphic effects these films use to keep scaring us.
The attraction of this kind of amusement is again the thrill of strong feeling, and again the price of indulging the desire for that thrill may be high. Let us consider a milder form of the drama built on arousing fear. There are stories in which fearsome things are threatened or aristotle essay by characters who are in the end defeated by means similar to, or in some way equivalent to, what they dealt out.
The fear is relieved in vengeance, and we feel a satisfaction that we might be inclined to call justice. To work on the aristotle essay of feeling, aristotle essay, though, justice must be understood as the exact inverse of the crime—doing to the offender the sort of thing he did or meant to do to others.
The imagination of evil then becomes the measure of good, or at least of the restoration of order. The satisfaction we feel in the vicarious infliction of pain or death is nothing but a thin veil over the very feelings we mean to be punishing. This is a successful dramatic formula, arousing in us destructive desires that are fun to feel, along with the self-righteous illusion that we are really superior to the character who displays them, aristotle essay.
The playwright who makes us feel that way will probably be popular, but he is a menace. We have looked at three kinds of non-tragedy that arouse passions in a destructive way, and we could add others. There are potentially as many kinds as there are passions and combinations of passions. That suggests that the theater is just an arena for the manipulation of passions in ways that are pleasant in the short run and at least reckless to pursue repeatedly.
At worst, the drama could be seen as dealing in a kind of addiction, which it both produces and holds the only remedy for, aristotle essay. But we have not yet tried to talk about the combination of passions characteristic of aristotle essay. When we turn from the sort of examples I have given, aristotle essay, to the acknowledged examples of tragedy, aristotle essay, we find ourselves in a different world.
The tragedians I have in mind are five: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides; Shakespeare, who differs from them only in time; and Homer, who differs from them somewhat more, in the form in which he composed, but shares with them the things aristotle essay matter most. I could add other authors, such as Dostoyevski, who wrote stories of the tragic kind in much looser literary forms, but I want to keep the focus on a small number of clear paradigms.
When we look at a tragedy we find the chorus in Antigone telling us what aristotle essay strange thing a human being is, aristotle essay passes beyond aristotle essay boundaries lines ff.
I could add more examples of this kind by the dozen, and your memories will supply others. Tragedy seems always to involve testing or finding the limits of what is human. This is no mere orgy of strong feeling, but a highly focussed way aristotle essay bringing our aristotle essay to bear on the image of what is human as such. I suggest that Aristotle is right in saying that the powers which first of all bring this human image to sight for us are pity and fear.
It is obvious that the authors in our examples are not just putting things in front of us to make us cry or shiver or gasp. The feelings they arouse are subordinated to another effect. Aristotle begins by saying that tragedy arouses pity and fear in such a way as to culminate in a cleansing of those passions, the famous catharsis.
The word is used by Aristotle only the once, in his preliminary definition of tragedy. I think this is because its role is taken over later in the Poetics by another, more positive, word, but the idea of catharsis is important in itself, and we should consider what it might mean. First of all, the tragic catharsis might be a purgation, aristotle essay.
Fear can obviously be an insidious thing that undermines life and poisons it with anxiety. It would be good to flush this feeling from our systems, bring it into the open, and clear the aristotle essay. This may explain the appeal of horror movies, that they redirect our fears toward something external, grotesque, aristotle essay, and finally ridiculous, in order to puncture them, aristotle essay.
On the other hand, fear might have a secret allure, so that what we need to purge is the desire for the thrill that comes with fear. The horror movie also provides a safe way to indulge and satisfy the longing to feel afraid, and go home afterward satisfied; the desire is purged, temporarily, by being fed.
Our souls are so many-headed that opposite satisfactions may be felt at the same time, but I think these two really are opposite.
In the first sense of purgation, the horror movie is a kind of medicine that does its work and leaves aristotle essay soul healthier, while in the second sense it is a potentially addictive drug. Either explanation may account for the popularity of these movies among teenagers, since fear is so much a fact of that time of life. For those of us who are older, the tear-jerker may have more appeal, offering a way to purge the regrets of our lives in a sentimental outpouring of pity.
Thomas Davidson's 1896 Essay on Aristotle
, time: 27:36The Internet Classics Archive | The Athenian Constitution by Aristotle
Aristotle’s most famous teacher was Plato (c. –c. BCE), who himself had been a student of Socrates (c. – BCE). Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, whose lifetimes spanned a period of only about years, remain among the most important figures in the history of Western blogger.comtle’s most famous student was Philip II’s son Alexander, later to be known The Aristotelian or classical argument is a style of argument developed by the famous Greek philosopher and rhetorician, Aristotle. In this style of argument, your goal as a writer is to convince your audience of something. The goal is to use a series of strategies to persuade your audience to adopt your side of the issue Aristotle’s use of the word catharsis is not a technical reference to purgation or purification but a beautiful metaphor for the peculiar tragic pleasure, the feeling of being washed or cleansed. The tragic pleasure is a paradox. As Aristotle says, in a tragedy, a
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